Parent's Guide: Everybody's Golf - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Everybody's Golf?

A cartoon golfing game for the whole family to enjoy, Everybody's Golf lets you take to the brightly coloured fairway for a pick up and play round of putting. Whether you plan to work your way up the golfing ranks in single player, fancy a fierce face-off online, or prefer a more local competition with up to four players all huddled around a single Playstation 4 (only one controller required!), Everybody's Golf has a mode for you.

How do you play Everybody's Golf?

Simply put, Everybody's Golf is a game about golf - the proper kind, rather than the crazy variety. Using a really simple control scheme, you'll set the angle of your shot, perhaps switch club to alter the distance your ball will travel, and maybe try to compensate for wind or the slope of the course, before firing off your shot using the "three button" method. Press once to start the meter building, again to set your shot power, and a third and final time when the bar reaches the marker at the bottom to fire off the perfect shot. Adding a bit of timing based skill to the game, stopping the marker dead centre will let your shot travel in a perfect straight line (wind and terrain permitting), but skewing it to either side will accidentally curve your shot. Get your third press way out of the timing zone and you'll botch up completely, often ending up landing your shot in the rough.

While the game plays pretty much the same whatever mode you're playing in, single player does offer a more structured 'story' mode of sorts to play through. Beginning as a green rookie golfer, you'll need to compete in tournaments to raise your golfing rank (and unlock all kinds of new hairstyles, accessories and equipment for your custom character in the process), in order to take on bigger and better opponents. Do well in enough tournaments and you'll catch the eye of a more experienced character, who'll challenge you to a golf-off, one on one - beat them and you'll start scaling the ranks, on the way to becoming the best golfer around. As a nice touch, when you're tired of golfing, you can race golf carts around or indulge in a spot of fishing instead, the latter being more of a mini-game in its own right, with a fair few species of fish to catch and collect. The aforementioned multiplayer modes, meanwhile, let you either face off against hordes of players online, or up to four players on the same console across a number of holes of your choosing, including a great "pass the controller" option, which lets four people play with just one pad!

How easy is Everybody's Golf to pick up and play?

Everybody's Golf has been designed with accessibility in mind - should you find the standard three-button-press control scheme a bit too tricky, you can switch to a simpler two button system instead, where the game will do the final press for you, ensuring your shots always go straight. While there's no adjustable difficulty level here, there are several ways of making the game easier should you find yourself struggling - Mega Cups, which make the holes bigger, or Tornado Cups, which suck nearby balls into them, although both can only be used outside of the Career. Should you find yourself struggling to make the top three in a tournament in Career mode, it's worth bearing in mind that the more you play, the better your custom character will get, able to hit the ball further, and more accurately, so with a little perseverance, you should be able to make it to the top.

While multiplayer with friends should be perfectly accessible for everyone, its worth bearing in mind that the single player career mode does have a surprising amount of text thrown in, none of which is voiced. It is mostly just tutorials, introducing new characters for you to face off against, or taking part in an optional quiz, so not absolutely essential, but we would say a decent reading ability is probably for the best.

Sample Sentences:

• "We've got a character customisation system now, which lets you customise your appearance however you like."
• "H-Hello! You can, ah, call me Specs. I'm one of the chairman's assistants, same as Hikari."
• "I am Professor Koenji, and for years, I've studied the history and rules of the game of golf - not to mention those of Everybody's Golf as well!"

As the name suggests, Everybody's Golf is a game that's suitable for everybody - there's no bad language, bloody violence or sex scenes whatsoever - just pure golfing fun. About the closest it comes to anything remotely questionable are some boob tubes and fishnet stockings as customisable clothes, and the ability to choose 'sexy' as your character's movement style, which can see them strike vaguely provocative poses. The words damn and hell do crop up in the dialogue too.

It's also worth bearing in mind that there is a sizeable online portion to the game, so those with a Playstation Plus subscription will be able to play with, and perhaps speak to, other players online, depending on your Playstation 4 settings.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4